Command not found running MariaDB CREATE or ALTER command

Packer
1

Running a packer script with WordPress and MariaDB on an EC2 Instance.

Trying to run sql commands from a shell provisioner or external script.

Keep getting command not found for CREATE or ALTER statements.

Latest attempt - packer snippet:

    {
            "type": "shell",
            "environment_vars": [
                    "db_user={{user `db_user`}}",
                    "db_password={{user `db_password`}}",
                    "db_user={{user `db_password`}}"
            ],
            "scripts": [
            "sql.sh"
            ],
            "pause_before": "4s"
    },

External sql.sh script:

#!/bin/sh

mysql -u root

CREATE USER $1@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY $2;

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY $3;

exit

What am I doing wrong? Thanks

2

You don’t pass your variables to the script, so the script cannot interpolate $1, $2 and $3. Either you pass the variables to the script in their correct position or you can use your environment variables in the script.

3

I thought that was the purpose of the environment variables?

When I pass the variables in the normal way, Packer throws an error.

Additionally, I get the same error - Command not found - when I embed the SQL statement in a Packer inline provisioner.

4

Environment variables are environment variables and treated as such. And if they should be used, maybe uppercase would be the better choice.
But no matter if upper or lowercase the $1 is a positional parameter meaning first parameter sent to the script. How should Packer know that db_user should be the first in line?

You script is wrong, too. You should pass you commands to the mysql client.

mysql -u root <<< 'CREATE...'
mysql -u root <<< 'UPDATE...'

Or using a heredoc

mysql -u root <<<EOF
CREATE... 
UPDATE... 
EOF

If command not found is your problem, maybe the mysql binary isn’t installed at all, or - due to your wrong script syntax - Packer wants to execute CREATE on the shell, not the mysql client.

Some more output/ logs/ debug would be great.

5

The script is not wrong outside of Packer, which is the reason for this post. It looks like I need to manually add the end of line (EOF) in Packer as you have done above to resolve the problem. I will try that.

As for the environment variables, I do not actually want to use those as that is a security problem, but many posts are telling people to do that and indicating that structure creates positional parameters, which apparently does not. Will be adding this to my security class.

I was trying to make the code functional, not adhere to coding standards.